CHINA’S largest private property developer has opened an entertainment complex to rival Disney’s US$5.5 billion Shanghai theme park, which opens next month.
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Wanda Group and its billionaire founder, Wang Jianlin, inaugurated a sprawling entertainment complex Saturday in China’s southeast, three weeks before the June 16 opening of Disney’s first mainland Chinese park in Shanghai.
As a leading player in Chinese firms’ globalization push, the property group has invested heavily in the film and cinema business and has spoken openly about overtaking Disney as a leading entertainment brand as a matter of nationalistic duty.
The Wanda Cultural Tourism City, spanning 2 square kilometres in southeastern Jiangxi province, features a theme park, a movie park, an aquarium, hotels and retail stores, according to the company.
The 200-hectare “Wanda City” park threw open its doors over the weekend in the city of Nanchang in the south-east of China.
“We have a strategy: One tiger can not compete with a pack of wolves”, said Wang in reference to the number of parks opened by Disney and the number of parks the Chinese company plans to set up in only five years.
Just days after predicting doom for Disney in China, and saying that the mainland had “passed the phase when we would go insane for cartoon characters”, billionaire Wang Jianlin opened his latest theme park on Saturday with appearances by Snow White and Captain America, both characters trademarked by the U.S. entertainment company.
The company estimates the Nanchang project cost a total of 20 billion yuan, or $3.05 billion at current exchange. Wanda CEO Wang Jianlin says his parks will crush Disney because “one tiger is no match for a pack of wolves”.
And just in case there was still any confusion as to whether Wanda is directly taking aim at Disney, Wanda spokesman Liu Mingsheng followed up with a statement to media. “This is the new global culture and tourism brand that Wanda is striving to build”, he said. Wanda group plans to have as many as 15 theme parks across China by 2020. It will be Disney’s third park in Asia but its first on the Chinese mainland, following its ventures in Japan and China’s semiautonomous satellite of Hong Kong.
People are seen walking towards the giant mall in Wanda City.
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“You can tell where he was going, with how he was positioning his theme parks”. In comparison Shanghai Disneyland is twice as expensive, charging 370 yuan for regular tickets and 499 yuan at peak times.
